


Creating Dean: Collaborative Character Construction and Actor Bleed

by dimplesofdiscontent



Category: Supernatural, Supernatural RPF
Genre: Acting process, Actor opinions, Collaborative art, Fandom issues, Meta, Network things, Writers' Room, Writing Process
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-23
Updated: 2018-12-23
Packaged: 2019-09-25 06:24:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17116133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dimplesofdiscontent/pseuds/dimplesofdiscontent
Summary: Comments on Jensen's opinions on Dean vs. those expressed by the writers and how it relates to his own background. Overall, I think Jensen’s understanding of Dean is highly experiential; his approach is focused on feeling what Dean would feel. It works wonders. But it means he doesn’t have as many metacognitive skills for parsing out what he thinks of Dean vs. what Dean thinks of Dean (aka character bleed). That’s ok, though, because the writers and showrunners are able to supply more of that metacognitive function, thinking about the processes that went into creating Dean as a character and making decisions accordingly. And when they work in tandem the result is this incredibly real, heartbreakingly vulnerable man we love.Originally posted on Tumblr on August 22, 2018. Tumblr tags:whew, dean feels, jensen feels, jensen about dean, asks, kinda, sorry if I don't directly answer your ask, jensen meta, spn writers' room, actor opinions, acting process, character bleed, destiel adjacent, intentionality collaborative art, collective unconscious, my meta, my stuff, wank adjacent, wank for ts, just in case





	Creating Dean: Collaborative Character Construction and Actor Bleed

**Author's Note:**

> RPS/RPF Disclaimer: In speculating or analyzing the lives of real people I'm making no claims of firsthand knowledge. These are speculative opinions based on observable phenomena but necessarily come from an extraordinarily limited viewpoint. They are for entertainment's sake only and should remain in fandom spaces and never be brought up to the actors, or anyone involved, in any way. Any discussions should remain respectful, as should any comments.

It is so very strange to witness so much infighting over things that I just have no idea about. I don’t really Fandom over on Twitter so I think I miss out on a lot of it, but occasionally it makes it way over here and I just feel so puzzled. Like tons of other people are having one conversation that I hear the tail end of (a tail end where they are all mad) and I just get so confused and am stuck wondering where it all came from or if it’s even worth my time to figure that out since, inevitably, another argument is going to surface soon.

But I do get asks that make me aware of certain discussions, which I am then hesitant to weigh in on because I try to avoid conflict and stay overall positive. I have thoughts on many of them, sure, but respectful disagreement can so quickly escalate. Like, I’m not sure who ever even said that they should replace Jensen as Dean but I’ve seen people being like “that is a CRAZY idea”…and it is, to the point where I cannot believe a) that anyone said that in total seriousness in the first place and b) that if they did say it in seriousness anyone took  _them_  seriously enough to engage with it. All the actors are remaining in their roles. Period. It seems like it must be an exaggerated version of a claim at least, a straw man at worst. But of course I don’t know.

I have had some asks too about Jensen’s interpretation of Dean vs. the writers’, which I know was a big point of contention on and off all hiatus (and before that, and before  _that_ , etc.). All I can really say without wading into deep waters is that I don’t think it’s  _at all_ incompatible to say that they understand the character equally well but from different perspectives. Television is a collaborative art form and a show that has gone on for this long has had an extremely high number of people contributing their own expertise to a complex character like Dean. Jensen has been a constant (though I would be shocked if his understanding of his character hasn’t changed somewhat in that time) and so he is absolutely one of the experts. But that doesn’t mean he’s the  _only_  expert in Dean. There can be multiple experts along multiple axes. 

Here’s what I mean: Jensen is the expert on acting Dean. Absolutely. But the character of Dean is created in more than the acting. There’s writing, directing, and editing just to start (plus costuming, scoring, set design, etc.). Some writers and showrunners and directors are  _also_  Dean experts from these other vantage points. In fact, the characters on SPN are so multi-layered because they have such a talented  _team_  of people working on them. It all relies on our fabulous leads (and all the amazing supporting cast…truly, they hire very good people at every level), but they would be the first to acknowledge that they didn’t create their characters all by themselves but instead worked with others to shape them and understand them.

When Jensen says something like he did about the scene with Mary in 12x22–that he hadn’t really understood Dean’s attitude towards her until he read it–that  _is_  him acknowledging that other people understand Dean in ways he doesn’t. He’ll always be the person who knows how to act it, to put in those mannerisms and micro-expressions and great subtlety. But his part only begins when he gets the scripts and reads his scenes–scenes in scripts that have already been worked over many times and considered as part of a season-long arc in a 14-year-old show. His process works wonders, but it’s not the only step in creating the character. Plus, as he’s said, he reads _only_  his scenes, unlike Jared, and doesn’t read ahead. This means that he tends to act his scenes with the same kind of knowledge  _as_  Dean: he knows what Dean knows, he’s experienced what Dean has experienced. Jared would, by contrast, have a much less limited POV when making his acting choices. That’s likely as much a deliberate choice as it is not liking to spend time reading (though he often teases Jared for being a nerd) and I think it’s why Dean feels more like a real person than perhaps any other TV character. It’s amazing! But it does mean that Jensen’s perspective on the story or character development tends to be like Dean’s perspective on his own story and character development. You can see why he thinks what he does and it’s not “wrong.” But the writers, showrunners, etc. create the character on a different, larger scale; it’s not that they are “wrong” either, just that they understand different aspects of his character in different contexts.

So when they disagree? That’s something for them to discuss and explain to each other, not something for us to go to war about. Jensen thought Dean would not have left Sam in the tunnel in 13x22; the rest of the creative team clearly thought that he would because they had a different perspective and so that’s the version we got. It’s not hating on Jensen, or on anyone, to say that writers understand a character differently from actors. It’s the essential nature of collaborative art that we see the synthesis of their efforts and decisions in the final result. When we argue about “experts” and owning the character what we are really talking about is intentionality, the biggest bugbear in literary studies (and many other disciplines too). When we talk about Destiel–an epiphenomenon of a decade’s worth of artistic choices on the parts of at least two dozen people (actors, writers, directors, showrunners, editors)–we can’t ascribe responsibility for it happening or not to one single person. Sometimes some things  _are_  intentional. “He’s in love…with Humanity” is written very intentionally. Giving the direction to Misha to act “like a jilted lover” is intentional. But many smaller things are either happenstance or, perhaps, a kind of collective unconscious impulse that no one person gets a say in precisely because it’s  _not_  intentional.

Jensen doesn’t, for example, choose which takes make the final cut even if he delivers all of them. Did he mean to have his voice crack in 9x03 when Cas is stabbed? He did it once, in the take they used, but would have have said “cut, print, that’s it!” about it? Who knows! He directed himself in 11x03 and cradled Misha’s face tenderly, staring into his eyes. Was that intentional? Do the editors always just choose the Destiel-iest takes? Who knows! My point is that Jensen acts his ass off, reacting the way he thinks Dean would react and he’s incredible at it. But that he doesn’t have insight into every single dimension of Dean’s character because he very deliberately approaches it from a viewpoint that closely aligns him with Dean. When that viewpoint conflicts with another member of the team, who also has Dean expertise, it’s a pain point precisely  _because_  it’s when intentionality rears its ugly head since one view has to assert itself over the other instead of having them naturally converge. If anything, this should show us how  _well_  views of Dean typically align! 

Overall, I think Jensen’s understanding of Dean is highly experiential; his approach is focused on feeling what Dean would feel. It works wonders. But it means he doesn’t have as many metacognitive skills for parsing out what he thinks of Dean vs. what  _Dean_  thinks of Dean (aka character bleed). That’s ok, though, because the writers and showrunners are able to supply more of that metacognitive function, thinking about the processes that went into creating Dean as a character and making decisions accordingly. And when they work in tandem the result is this incredibly real, heartbreakingly vulnerable man we love.

So, please, guys, let’s stop attacking each other over whether Jensen knows Dean better than anyone else working on SPN. He does in some ways, but not in others…and that’s how it should be! He couldn’t possibly act the way he does if he was too busy performing literary analysis on his scripts the way we do. But since the writers do that (and they do) that means that they have some additional understanding to offer, even to Jensen. And none of us needs to be upset over any of it! We can just be delighted that all these people came together in all these tiny ways to create this character that we adore. 


End file.
